Tuesday, June 1, 2010

A work in progress

We've been working pretty diligently in the children's garden and it's really looking good. Seeds are planted, new tree cookies are installed, and everything is cleaned up!

If the truth is to be told I love this garden as much as the children do. I love working in it and I love watching the children play in it. So I have been a little distraught as to what to do in one corner of the garden that has struggled the last year or two. This area of the garden has a drainage issue. The clay soil really holds onto the water and I believe that it is suffocating the roots of our plants. Up until this last weekend this is what it looked like.

A few of the plants were coming up again but I knew better than to replant without trying to work on the soil. After some research I found an article on amending the soil to help with better drainage and we decided to give it a try.

We started by adding sand, soil conditioner and lime to the soil.

Bryce then begin tilling the area. However, he commented that the tiller was not heavy enough and he could use some extra weight.

Next thing I knew I looked over to discover the children bringing over a heavy stone! They had overheard Bryce and decided to help solve the problem.

I fear that I would have told them that it would never work, but Bryce went and got straps and strapped the rock onto the tiller. I love that he gave their idea credit by trying it out. And guess what? It worked!

Because we added so much material the area is a little raised, which I hope will also help with the drainage. When we were all done with the soil, we planted blueberry bushes. I can't tell you how excited we are about having berries on our very own shrubs!

P.S. I'm working on organizing my labels for the blog. I've started with the children's garden. In the column to the right I have a label where all the posts I've done concerning the children's garden are, hopefully, in one place (including the plan).

2 comments:

Lots of work for everyone. . . . .you must really let Grace take some of the pics so we can see your contributions as well. . . .The corner looks great and we surely hope the bushes do well. Those blueberries look delicious! I agree that Bryce giving credibility to the children's idea is just being a super dad.